it should be passed in a
pleasant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere underneath it.
On each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, with
two wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately sized park; a
large garden and hot houses; and pleasant carriage drives through the
shrubberies. In this mansion are to live the favoured votaries of the
Goddess; the English gentleman, with his gracious wife, and his
beautiful family; always able to have the boudoir and the jewels for the
wife, and the beautiful ball dresses for the daughters, and hunters for
the sons, and a shooting in the Highlands for himself. At the bottom of
the bank, is to be the mill; not less than a quarter of a mile long,
with a steam engine at each end, and two in the middle, and a chimney
three hundred feet high. In this mill are to be in constant employment
from eight hundred to a thousand workers, who never drink, never strike,
always go to church on Sunday, and always express themselves in
respectful language.

Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing you
propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed seen from above; not at
all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family this
deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting on, to a thousand families she is
the Goddess of _not_ Getting on. 'Nay,' you say, 'they have all their
chance.' Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must always be
the same number of blanks. 'Ah! but in a lottery it is not skill and
intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance.' What then! do you
think the old practice, that 'they should take who have the power, and
they should keep who can,' is less iniquitous, when the power has become
power of brains instead of fist? and that, though we may not take
advantage of a child's or a woman's weakness, we may of a man's
foolishness? 'Nay, but finally, work must be done, and some one must be
at the top, some one at the bottom.' Granted, my friends. Work must
always be, and captains of work must always be; and if you in the least
remember the tone of any of my writings, you must know that they are
thought unfit for this age, because they are always insisting on need of
government, and speaking with scorn of liberty. But I beg you to observe
that there is a wide difference between being captains or governors of
work, and taking the profits of it. It does not follow, because you are
general of an army, that